Singer/actress Barbara van Orden, actor Sam Medina and music and TV historian Geoffrey Mark will join us this weekend on TV CONFIDENTIAL, airing Friday at 7pm ET and PT on Share-a-Vision Radio, KSAV.org.

Barbara van Orden began her career as a nightclub singer in the Catskill Mountains, opening for Milton Berle, Don Rickles, Red Buttons, and others before performing alongside Buddy Hackett, Soupy Sales and Morey Amsterdam in Playboy Clubs across the country, as well as opening for Frank Sinatra in the legendary Persian Room in New York City. Sinatra not only took Barbara under his wing early in her career, but encouraged her to help other young artists down the road just as he had helped her.

Today, among other things, Barbara is paying it forward through co-executive producing, along with Michael Sterling, the twelfth annual LA’s Next Great Stage Star Competition, the only musical theatre competition of its kind on the West Coast. Now in its twelfth year, LA’s Next Great Stage Star Competition provides a spotlight for undiscovered performers between the ages of eighteen and thirty-two with “triple threat” talent (meaning, they must excel in acting, voice and dance). Over the years, more than twenty contestants from LA’s Next Great Stage Star Competition have made their Broadway and/or Off-Broadway debuts, while 50 percent of the remaining overall contestants have not only received professional Equity theatrical agency representation, but have gone on to join U.S. National Broadway Tours in starring, featured and ensemble roles. In addition, other Stage Star contestants have found work in regional theatres throughout Southern California and across the country (including major Las Vegas hotels that house long-running Broadway musical productions), as well as local, national and international theme parks, cruise line productions, commercials, and film and TV productions.

Also joining us this weekend will be actor Sam Medina. If you follow martial arts movies, you know Sam as the antagonistic Crawford in Kickboxer: Vengeance and Kickboxer: Retaliation. If you watch the AMC series Preacher, you know Sam as Samarai Guy, while viewers of From Dusk to Dawn: The Series know him as Razor Charlie. Sam’s other film and TV credits include Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, Tracers, Savages, Dragon Eyes, The Baytown Outlaws, Let’s Be Cops, Ant-Man, Treme, Army Wives, MacGyver, and NCIS: Los Angeles.

Sam plays Axel, the lead antagonist opposite Mark Wahlberg, in the action/thriller Mile 22, which opens in theaters everywhere on Friday, Aug 17. We’ll talk to Sam about working alongside Wahlberg and director Peter Berg in Mile 22 (including shooting part of the film on location in Bogota), plus we’ll ask him about his roots in New Orleans and the role he played to help rebuild the city after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina; how he approaches playing villains, even when the character requires him to go to a dark place; working with Tom Hardy in the new Marvel adventure Venom (which opens in theaters on Friday, Oct. 5); and how he will make his directorial debut later this year in Code Name: The Dragon, an action movie starring MMA superstar Cung Le. Sam Medina will join us in our first hour.

Also this week: We will circle back to a program we did earlier this year when we welcome back singer, producer and music and TV historian Geoffrey Mark. You might recall that we had a roundtable discussion with Tony Figueroa and Donna Allen in which we talked about the original Will and Grace and whether that series falls under the realm of “classic television.” While some will say yes, just as many would say no because their definition of “classic television” is restricted to a certain period of time. That morphed into a conversation about How Would You Define a Classic TV Show? Geoff has a few thoughts on this matter, which we’ll ask him about when he joins us in our first hour. He will also share a story about a word of advice that Rip Taylor once gave him that changed the course of Geoff’s career.

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